


Birthday Party, Cheesecake, Jelly Bean, Boom!

by stitchy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Babysitting, Ben POV, Canon Compliant, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Post-Season/Series 01, Sibling Bonding, Superpowers, Time Travel, Vanya POV, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: In which the Umbrella Kids get distracted from some rapid time travel jumping by a suddenly un-ghosted Ben! Half wind up in the 90's and half on an alien planet. The kids learn more about their mysterious origins and powers, and avert yet another apocalypse!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah that's an REM lyric for a title, don't worry about it.

It was a routine training session until it wasn’t. Ben was splayed out like an action figure in shrink wrap packaging.

THE HORROR, *LIMITED EDITION* ‘PAINED EXPRESSION’

He couldn’t move his arms or legs and his Others were oddly still, too. His throat was raw from shouting, but he can't recall what he might have said to his father as he watched, his monocle flashing in the light.

It’s hard to say what went wrong. Ben could never explain it properly, even when he first returned and Klaus asked what had happened. He didn’t exactly see anything, because he can’t confidently say he perceived it with his eyes in the first place. There was a loudquiet purplegreenzebrastripe colored _something_. A smell maybe? But rippling on his skin, like it had a heat. Was it a light? Maybe it was light, maybe it was the absence of light.

_Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!_

Whatever it was, it made him super dead.

-

Five takes them from the brink of the apocalypse to the roof of The Umbrella Academy. If there’s any one place from _before_ that Ben would recognize instantly, it’s here. Every unclaimed moment he had as a child was spent up here where he could see anywhere else but home. He had memorized the skyline in every direction. Every tower, every light was right where he left it. A draft of wind swoops up between buildings and over the roof, and nearly rushes Ben off his feet. It’s been so long since he felt anything like it. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything at all.

Five’s brow furrows as he looks down at himself, still small and childish. “Hold on! We gotta keep moving,” he says.

Ben tightens his anxious grip on Klaus’ shoulder, and on either side of him Allison and Diego’s eyes widen as they meet his.

“Oh my god!”  
  
“Ben!”

Suddenly their arms are wrapping around him, holding him tight for the first time in years. Once he realizes what’s happening, even Klaus tackles in for a four-way hug. Ben’s senses flood. He can smell the bubblebath preteen Allison was obsessed with, and Diego’s pomade, and the reek of ozone as...

Five blinks away with Luther and Vanya.

“You’re alive!” Allison shrieks. If teleporting in time hadn’t already transformed her back into a giddy youth, her pure delight would have. Her hands shake as she pinches his cheeks. “And so young and cute!”

“Uh-”

“Sorry. Just had a Mom Urge.” Allison lets go when Diego starts batting her arm urgently for attention.

"It’s really great that you’re alive, Ben, believe me,” he rushes, “-B-but I feel like I should point out that the others just left without us!”

Allison covers her mouth. “Oh, no, no!”

They break apart, each frantically checking their immediate surroundings. Klaus circles twice around a planter that could hardly conceal a cat behind it, let alone Vanya, calling her name.

Vanya doesn’t call back. Five doesn’t reappear. Luther doesn’t scold them. No one jumps out from hiding, laughing at their prank. Another gust of wind rushes over the rooftop making it feel all the more empty.

“What do we do?” asks Ben.

The four of them glance between one another. They all look so young. They were too young to be dodging assassins and dealing in life or deal stakes the first time they were thirteen, however fun it seemed at the time. Looking at his siblings again now, Ben has some perspective. Honestly, _fuck Dad_.

In the absence of their Number One, Diego draws himself up to his full, albeit adolescent height and plants his fists on his hips, a caricature of authority. “We have to figure out when it is. Figure out our vulnerabilities and assets. Enemies and allies.”

Everyone seems a little uncertain at first. Are they just going to let Diego run the show because he’s next in the pecking order, or what? Have they outgrown that, or has being thrust back into their past selves rewound the clock on their dynamic too? Allison seems okay with it. She just pushes her hair out of her face as another breeze blows, looking determined.

“Vulnerability: We are babies,” says Klaus. “But! I’m pretty sure I haven’t chipped my front tooth yet.” He wiggles the tip of his tongue against it to check.

Allison catches a lock of her hair that keeps blowing in her face and looks at it cross eyed. “Gingerbread Latte.”

“Yes please,” says Klaus, smacking his lips.

“No, it’s the dye color,” Allison says, pointing at her head. “They discontinued it, so I switched to Red Velvet in winter 2004. It’s obviously autumn now so it’s gotta be 2003.”

“Asset: Great dye job.”

Diego nods and then starts to stalk the edge of the roof to keep an eye on the Academy’s entrance. “All right, 2003 it is. But Five kept moving, so that means those time cop freaks will still be after us, even now.”

Ben tries to wrap his head around the idea of running from someone for whom time is not an obstacle. “ _Our_ Five kept moving, but maybe the _now_ Five can help?”

“ _Now’s_ Five is already gone,” Allison sighs, twirling her hair around her finger thoughtfully.

Ben sags. “Probably not a great idea to meet our past selves anyway.”

Klaus squints and scratches his head. “What was happening in 2003? Something big. And I don’t mean the sudden rise of the fauxhawk, I mean like a mission. The year is sticking out in my brain.”

“Didn’t they clone a horse?” It’s all Ben can remember, for some reason.

Diego snorts. “Not the kind of ally I’m thinking of.”

“Maybe that wacko with the train full of zombies,” Klaus muses. “‘Member that guy, Ben?”

“I try not to,” Ben shudders. He _still_ gets the creeps taking the subway, even as a ghost... _Former_ ghost.

“...there was a Bee Gee, that one dictator dude, Mr. Rogers...”

Diego snaps his fingers in Klaus’ face. “Are you just listing recently dead people now?”

Klaus huffs indignantly. “It’s my _only_ power, Mr. Semi-Telekinetic Fish Lungs!”

Allison stops pulling on her hair and fist pumps triumphantly. “I dyed it Red Velvet!”

“Yeah, we know!” Diego rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.

“It was a really bold color for me. I was spiraling out ‘cause Luther left!”

“Oh!” Klaus slaps his forehead. “Spaceboy: First Boy in Space, 2003. That’s it!”

On the heels of losing Five, their father had stopped putting all of his eggs in one basket. No more full-team missions. Maybe he was afraid of making them all vulnerable at once, but if he was motivated by care for their well being it certainly hadn’t felt like it at the time. The team was all they had. Splitting them up was wrenching. Allison and Diego handled seedy coercion cases and Ben and Klaus dealt with gruesome homicides, while Luther trained for the spotlight. The lead up to the launch was a whirlwind of posters and t-shirts and tv interviews focused solely on him, and then he was gone for six months. It put everyone in a weird funk. Allison might have been the most outwardly noticeable with her angry red hair, but that was also when Klaus had started self medicating, and Diego, for want of a Number One to compete with, began prize fighting. It was when Ben started coming up to the roof at night not to stargaze, but to cry.

He swallows a lump in his throat and points at a nondescript silo in the middle of the rooftop he knew so well. “Before launch, Dad housed the shuttle up here. How’s that for an asset?”

Allison grins. “Maybe the Commission can find us anytime, anywhere on Earth... but what about space?” She and Ben look to Diego hopefully while Klaus hops in place, fingers crossed.

Diego sighs. “We may as well take a look.”

“Yay!”

Without the scaffolding, it takes a human pyramid to get them up to the bulkhead, but they didn’t train in gymnastics for nothing. At the top, Diego and his knives jimmy at the lock until Allison gives in.

“I heard a rumor Luther left it open after training.”

The door springs out automatically and sends Diego toppling down. Unfortunately Ben and Klaus are a little too rusty to catch him.

“Ugh. If you were just gonna rumor it, why didn’t _you_ go up in the first place?” he says, rubbing his shoulder.

Allison simply marches past him. “Just because you look like a child doesn’t mean you’ve gotta whine like one!” She takes a leg up from Klaus and Ben and vaults inside. A moment later she reaches an arm down to start pulling them in too.

When Ben clambers onto the short walkway between the wall of the silo and the door of the shuttle itself, he can see that Allison’s rumor handily opened both. Inside, the operational lights of the craft glow, beckoning them in. The others step through and Ben follows, ignoring the unsettled rumble in his stomach. His Others have never enjoyed flying.

“Nice digs,” says Klaus. He runs his fingers along the top of a leather seat opposite a viewport and dashboard.

The interior is like most things designed by Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eschewing clean, compact modern aesthetics in favor of Old World materials and inscrutable gizmos. It’s cramped, of course- no more floor space than the average bathroom, but it’s spectacular. A system of mirrors on adjustable arms create a periscopic panorama of the surroundings on either side of the viewport, though they show very little while the shuttle is still in the dark silo. For the most part, the controls are unlabeled but intuitive. Steering column, fuel gauge, speedometer, altimeter, all where you’d expect. The most conspicuous labeling is elsewhere. A ladder and a row of hatches line the wall behind the captain’s chair, numbered 1 through 7. There’s really only room for one assumption.

“Are these for us?” Ben asks, his hand on the engraved number 6. It looks like a locker with a circular glass window rimmed in brass. It reminds him a bit of a giant monocle. “It looks like Dad planned for us to be here.”

Allison looks up to the third hatch, about eight feet off the ground. “Why didn’t Luther ever mention this?”

Klaus plops into the seat and puts his feet up on the dashboard. “Weird, he usually tells me _everything_.” His foot must knock a switch, because a blue light bulb suddenly ignites.

“Watch it!” Diego shoves his feet off and then leans over the controls, trying to make sense of them. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, here.”

“Do _you_?” asks Klaus, raising a supercilious eyebrow. Both fly up when the blue light erupts into a pattern of stringing lasers, casting text onto the glass of the viewport.

_INITIATING..._

Ben joins his brothers at the console, but Allison hangs back. “Please tell me one of you knows something about computers.”

_LOG IN: NUMBER THREE_

“Looks like we might not need to know much,” says Diego. He locates a small grill that looks like a microphone and taps it, producing a static feedback.

_LOG IN: NUMBER TWO_

“Seriously?” Ben looks at Diego.

_LOG IN: NUMBER SIX_

“Yo!”

_LOG IN: NUMBER FOUR_

There’s a pause after that where Ben wonders if they’ll need the full team to get any further. After a few moments without input, the lasers waver again.

_RUN: [ENTER]_

“I’ve watched Pogo update Mom a few times,” Diego says, then leans low over the microphone. “Run: Generation R Artificial Consciousness Engine.”

“Mom?” This is already so bizarre, Ben half expects her to walk through the door.

_INITIATING..._

“I mean, she _is_ a program,” Diego points out. “It’s just a different... body.”

Klaus throws his arms wide in acceptance. “After seven kids, I think she looks great!”

"Hello children,” says a familiar, disembodied voice. “Are you playing together nicely?”

Diego relaxes at the sound of her voice. “Yeah, we’re doing great. Can you help us get out of here?”

“Of course, Diego. Which flight plan would you like to use?” she asks cheerfully.

Allison laughs. “What, is there a more scenic way to get to the Moon?”

Mom answers her in all seriousness. “There are contingencies for any landing site on Earth, the Moon, and Ix.”

“Ix?” Diego frowns and looks around at his siblings, but no one recognizes the name.

_INITIATING..._

Ben shrugs. “Maybe Dad put a satellite in orbit, or something?”

Diego just shrugs back, but Allison holds up a hand _STOP_ , eyes wide. “Did you guys hear that?”

There’s a pause as they all try to listen. Allison shoves past them to the walkway door and Ben tries to follow, still acting on the unfearing instincts of a ghost, but Diego catches his arm and holds him back. He shakes his head sharply. Their sister is only gone for a moment before a heavy metallic thud rings the silo like a bell, and then she stumbles back into the shuttle, slamming the second bulkhead behind her, too.

“The Commission!” she shouts. “Mom! We have to go, now!”

Two hulls away, gunfire pings off the silo, sounding like hail on the roof of the family car.

_IMPACT DETECTED_

“I’ll set in a course for Ix,” says Mom’s warm, unshakeable voice. “To prepare for launch, you can access your compartments by pressing a palm to your corresponding window.”

Klaus mouths _Spacesuits!!_ excitedly to Ben. They all start to scramble around each other away from the viewport, towards the ladder.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, children?”

“Actually yeah,” Diego says breathlessly. “This might sound weird, but if you ever hear from Five again, as _soon_ as you do- can you tell him where we went?”

There’s more gunfire and a quick buzz of static, like the computer is wincing before Mom replies. “Your brother is no longer with us, Diego. I’m sorry. Would you like to be comforted?”

_IMPACT DETECTED_

_NO BREACH_

_LAUNCH: T- 01.00_

“That’s okay Mom! Just tell him we went to Ix.”

“Yes, dear.”

As Ben’s compartment is the closest to the ground in the absence of Vanya, he gets to his first, slapping his hand to the cool surface of the little window. Blue light traces around his fingers, then appears around the seams of the compartment. A hiss of air, and then it pops open like a drawer. Ben pulls it open a few inches but doesn't see a suit. Assuming it must’ve jostled farther back, he keeps pulling and the compartment _keeps opening_ until there’s nearly a yard of empty, glowing drawer before him.

From above on the ladder, Allison makes the realization out loud. “They’re not for our gear, they’re for _us_.”

Something outside booms and Ben glances back at the viewport.

_NON CRITICAL BREACH DETECTED_

_LAUNCH: T- 00.45_

“Get in, get in!” Klaus pushes at Allison, a few rungs below. Diego has already disappeared into his compartment.

“If I wake up dead again, I swear to god,” Ben sighs, stepping into the drawer and scooting down into the bottom. He gulps before laying his head back.

When he died his remains apparently weren’t the sort to require a burial, so he didn’t have the same hang ups as most (if there were other former ghosts) about coffins- but he has the feeling he’s about to develop some.

To his surprise it’s not hard inside the compartment. The light inside seems to suspend him. If he didn’t see the bottom of Klaus’ drawer disappearing above him, he wouldn’t even know his was moving, closing itself. As soon as he’s fully in, he feels like he may as well be standing upright. There’s nothing to see but blue light, and a breeze not unlike the rooftop outside ripples over him. He blinks, once... twice... and then can’t seem to keep his eyes open.

“Good night, Ben,” says his mother. “Sleep tight!”

-

Vanya wakes up with the mother of all hangovers, but she can’t really remember going out the night before. Or coming home, or climbing into bed. _Ugh_. When her aching head lolls to one side it becomes obvious this isn’t her bed at all. She’s laying on that unforgiving, thin kind of carpet that they put directly over concrete in department stores and office buildings. Beside her are two pairs of feet, backdropped by a shelf full of books.

“Go back and get them!” the big feet insist.

One of the small feet taps impatiently. “Go back to _when_? I didn't check the date, did you?”

Big feet shift anxiously. “We should check it now.”

The small feet disappear in a blink and reappear a moment later. “It’s 1990.”

Vanya clutches her head. She must be mishearing things... “How- _oww_. How...”

The two pairs of feet startle and her brothers fall to their knees beside her. Luther scoops her into one of his massive arms and pries back her eyelid with a thumb. “Vanya! Can you hear me?”

Seeing Five over his shoulder shocks her to clarity for a few moments, but then she begins to recall what had happened. “Yeah, yeah.” She squirms away from Luther before he can check the other eye.

“You look... Normal.”

Vanya sits up and wedges her back against a bookshelf. “As opposed to what?”

Five, who has always looked grim, frowns even more than usual. “Vanya, what do you remember? What’s the last thing you remember happening?”

She wracks her brain. The last thing she remembers was heading home from... home. Her capital H, _Home_ where she grew up. It had been a long time since she’d been back to the Academy. Years, actually. But she had to because of- “the funeral,” she whispers.

Luther and Five glance at each other, thin lipped. “Do you remember that I came over to your apartment after?” asks Five.

“Really?”

Despite the layers of padlocks and bubblewrap Vanya tends to keep around her heart, it squeezes a little. Her brother is back! Her only childhood friend! It’s kind of unusual for her to get sentimental, but she supposes it’s not everyday she scatters her father’s remains. And she can’t remember the last time, if ever, that one of her siblings came to pay her a visit. Her head throbs, scouring itself for a memory of it. Must’ve been a hell of a night.

“If you did, I assume we drank,” she says. She pats down her coat pockets, checking to see if she still has her meds. Usually she keeps a Tylenol in with the rest. Strangely, there’s nothing.

“So _nothing_ past that night. No new acquaintances?” Vanya shakes her head. “Fine.” Five gets back to his feet, automatically changing course. He was always brash.

Luther looks somewhat disappointed, but that’s nothing new either. “She doesn’t- she... We’ll have to fill her in later.”

Five offers her a hand off the ground. “Long story short,” he says, “-some serious shit went down and I had to time travel us out of there. We’re in 1990 now. At the library.”

Luther huffs. “We sort of lost the others on the way,” he grumbles. “We’re not really sure when.” His massive shoulders nearly span the width of the aisle, and as his agitation grows they threaten to knock books off their shelves. Someone passing by their row gives them an odd look and Five sneers back.

“Which others is that?”

“Allison, Diego, Klaus.”

“-and Ben,” adds Five.

Vanya can’t be hearing that right. “Ben. _Ben_?”

Luther points at Five. “Yeah. But I can’t explain it.”

Hands in his pockets, Five leans against the shelf as though there’s a casual way to explain how they had resurrected their brother. “The first point we traveled back to was before Ben’s death. His consciousness piggybacked there with Klaus and when we arrived, and he took form like any of the rest of us. The others got distracted by him just before we jumped a second time and _voilà_.”

Vanya’s eyes prickle. “So he’s alive too. You’re both back!?”

“He is, somewhere,” Five shrugs. “Here and now, we’re all infants.”

“What do we do?” A tear rolls down her cheek. What is going _on_? She never cries. “Shouldn’t we go back for the others?” she asks quickly, trying to deflect from wiping her face. “Should we go find Dad?”

“Maybe, but we definitely shouldn’t rush to that.” Graciously, Five examines the spine of a book rather than acknowledge her waterworks.

“We should stay here,” Luther decides. “Or now, whatever. Boy Scouts style. Think things through.”

Five nods. “We can leave messages for the others in places they’re likely to check. I’ve got a place we can stay until we figure out the next step.” He starts off walking without them, down the aisle towards a section marked ‘Periodicals’.

Vanya wipes her nose and hurries along after him, Luther quick on her heels. “You have an apartment in the 90’s?”

“No. I have a house,” Five says, turning sharply into ‘Local Archives’. “Bought it for a song and a dance during The Great Depression.”

-

“Rise and shine!”

Diego is upside down. Upside down, and looking much the same as he had at the Icarus Theatre, save for the fact he’s wearing one of those shiny black catsuits they used to wear. When Ben pushes his compartment the rest of the way open his latex sleeves squeak and he realizes his school uniform has also transformed. Unfortunately.

He sits up in his compartment and rubs his eyes so he can get his bearings. Klaus and Allison are there too, looking approximately as grown up as they were supposed to be and less than thrilled about the dress code.

“I hope there’s baby powder somewhere on this shuttle or we are going to _chaffe_ ,” Allison says to Klaus, already scratching her underarms.

Klaus shirks the top half of the jumpsuit and ties the sleeves around his waist. “Sometimes I think I could have lived with the emotional neglect, forced physical training, and child imperilment if we’d been equipped with breathable fabrics.” He flaps the bottom of his tank top to get a little air going and Ben notices all of his tattoos except for the umbrella are all gone. They must have made their trip while they were sleeping, aging again from childhood.

Mom’s voice chimes in, helpfully. “Your suits will be adequate cover from the stellar exposure on the surface of Ix, as well as resilient against ground debris. Please remember to take water with you when you disembark!”

Ben checks the viewport screen to see what the blue lasers have to say for themselves and is struck by the landscape outside before he can register the text. He had been expecting to see only stars and blackness. For their ship to connect to some sort of man made station, still in view of the Earth or the moon or whatever. Not _this_. Not what is clearly an alien planet. There are traces of ruined architecture set in a flat and red waste, connected to the purple sky by dozens of pillars of smoke.

_LOCAL DATA NOT FOUND_

He joins Diego at the control panel, trying to get a better look. It looks... not good.

“I don’t think anyone’s home,” says Diego.

It’s hard to tell how much the thick glass of the viewport distorts depth, but as far as Ben can tell, nothing left standing nearby is taller than human height. “It looks like a graveyard,” he says, glancing at Klaus.

“And here I was hoping one of the perks of space travel was no ghosts,” Klaus sighs.

Allison joins them at the viewport. “Is it safe out there?” Once she asks one question, they start to domino. “How do we know we can breathe? Can we communicate with Earth from here? Can we get back? _Why did we steal a spaceship without thinking about any of this_?!”

“Allison, sweetheart, why don’t you sit down?” says Mom. Allison does not. “While Ix may no longer be of its former glory, you children will be safe here. In travelling seventeen years, eight months, and nine days away, you have been spared from Earth’s destruction.”

“We’ve been asleep seventeen years?!” Allison collapses into the captain’s chair after all and buries her face in her hands.

Klaus pats her shoulder sympathetically. “Eh, so we missed the big Three-Oh. I’ve turned thirty before, it’s overrated.”

“The apocalypse still happened?” asks Diego. He looks around pleadingly, Ben assumes for Mom. He only just now notices that the jagged scar from his brother’s ear to his cheek has disappeared, too. These must be new bodies, separate from their original selves. That’s why the apocalypse went ahead same as always.

“We didn’t change anything,” Ben tells his siblings, sure of it. “We are a _new_ us. The old us must have still been with the Academy when we landed on the roof. We shot off into space, and the old us just did what they always do. I died, we failed Vanya, and she killed everyone else.”

“I did it,” Allison whispers. “It’s my fault. I rumored her when we were kids, and I told Mom to launch us-”

“To save us from the Commission!” Klaus nudges Allison with an affectionate elbow. “They woulda hung us by our nuts.”

“-now we’re stuck here,” Allison goes on. “And Luther and Five and Vanya are-”

“Counting on us to keep it together,” Diego says, definitively. “They’re smart. We’re smart. We’ll figure something out.” He pushes past his brothers toward the bulkhead. “Now, we came all this way, we may as well see what there is to see before we turn around. Mom, open the door.”

The hull of the ship pops and sizzles like a bottle soda as the pressure seal breaks. Daylight, purple though it may be, floods in as the hatch swings open. Ben makes sure Allison comes along and follows Diego through to the surface of Ix.

Red ground crunches under Ben’s feet, but it's not like the dusty rock he’d expect on the moon, or even like a gravelly beach. It’s more like stepping out on to sun-scorched grass during a drought. There are already footprints where Diego has gone ahead of him, marking his way across the dry terrain.

“See that ridge there?” Diego points. “We should take a look. It might have given the buildings nearby some protection when... whatever happened happened here.”

Allison shields her eyes with one hand and looks up into the oddly colored sky. The gray clouds above are as still as a snapshot. “There is like, zero wind here.”

“Then these smoke trails might be worth checking out,” Ben wonders aloud. Without wind, who knows how long they’ve been there? They stretch from the ground to the sky and must have _something_ going on at the base.

Behind him, Klaus stops in his tracks. “Oh, sorry. It was kind of an emergency,” he says.

It turns Ben’s attention away from estimating how many smoke pillars there are in a square mile. “Who are you talking to?”

“Uh.” Klaus is white as a bone. “This lady wants to know what we’re doing with _her_ spaceship?”

-

God, is she nervous. Sweaty, shaky hands, nervous as hell.

Here’s the thing- Vanya has _never_ been on a job interview before. Not the kind where you sit across a desk from someone, clutch your CV and grin like an idiot, anyway. Dad had simply placed her in a position at one of his companies if she needed money, or more commonly- simply cut her a check. She has auditioned before, but that’s usually a ‘ _State your name and begin playing from the tenth measure’_ kind of set up. No back and forth talking, trying to convince someone. That hasn’t been her strength since she was eight years old, helping her father calibrate a polygraph machine.

The door of Pogo’s office opens and he motions for her to come inside. He’ll be conducting the interview today- Five made sure of it. He concocted a consortium on clean energy for Sir Reginald to speak at this week, to keep him out of the way as she infiltrates The Umbrella Academy.

Luckily, the Academy had advertised in the paper for a new nanny. Unluckily, Vanya was their only option. Luther was too conspicuously huge and Five was too conspicuously an actual child to apply for the position.

 _Fine, of the three of us, it has to be me, I get it. But I’ve held, like, one baby in my entire life, why on earth would they hire me over someone with experience in child care?_ she had asked. Luther just shrugged. Five ripped a sheet of paper off of the typewriter and practically pushed her out the door. He assured her that most applicants will be thrown off by being interviewed by a chimpanzee. Between ‘this immaculate resume’ and her ease with Pogo, she’ll be the _only_ choice.

“Dr. Pogo,” says Vanya, offering a hand shake. “It’s great to finally meet you. I’ve read your memoir.”

The reserved, uptight posture Pogo had been holding melts into warmth as he takes her hand and shakes it. “Miss Anya. Thank you. Won’t you please sit down?”

Vanya puts Five’s ‘immaculate’ resume on his desk before taking a seat in a clawfooted chair with squashy arms that she had sat in so, so many times, growing up. It’s a little springier than she remembers, but it finally puts her at ease. She just has to be friendly and polite with Pogo, as she always has.

She glances at a rack of stag horns hung over his desk.

“The decor here is incredible,” she says. “You must travel a lot.”

Pogo sits at his desk and smiles easily. “Every continent except mainland Australia, somehow. Though I have been to Tasmania.”

“Even Antarctica?” Vanya asks, but of course she already knows.

“One of my favorites, actually!”

“I love penguins,” smiles Vanya. It’s not even a lie. Most people who earn their living in a tux come by a soft spot for them sooner or later. One of the conductors she had studied with in college had a collection of at least fifty in her office. “-and kids,” she adds hastily.

Pogo picks up her resume and scans her credentials. “And why do you want to work with children?”

 _Hmm_. She should have expected that, really. She considers the seven little babies she knows are close by. All innocent, all as yet unmarred by the life laid out ahead of them. Vanya clears her throat.

“I think I like that nothing has happened to them yet,” she answers. “They’re doing everything for the first time. They’re learning. They don’t know how to talk or walk yet, but they don’t know how to be mean on purpose, either. They’re just tiny, confused people who need help in the bath.”

She doesn’t mean it as a joke but Pogo laughs, regardless. “And you’re experienced in working with special children, I see here.”

Five prepped her for this. How to twist the truth of their childhood into a confident lie. “Yes, I’ve worked with kids who I had to track physical progress and medical data for.”

“That will be important here,” says Pogo. He puts down her resume and adjusts his glasses to look her in the eye. “I’ll be frank, Miss Anya. I like you for the position, and not just because we’re a bit desperate for reliable staff. I try to maintain and one to one ratio of child to caregiver, but three of our children prove exceptionally difficult to place. Number Five’s nanny has given her two weeks notice, and I’ll be filling in with Number Seven as a stopgap, but I think you’ll be a good fit for Number Six.”

It doesn’t surprise Vanya that Five or Ben’s powers would freak out a series of nannies, or that no one could be bothered to invest in her own baby self, but somehow she never anticipated who she might be paired with. As soon as she realized it was Ben, she longed to see him. The ferocity of the impulse caught her off guard. Maybe it was just because it had been years and years since she’d last seen him, while everyone else had been at the funeral.

“That sounds good,” she tells Pogo.

He gets up from his desk again and indicates for her to follow. “Let me give you a tour of the nursery wing and introduce you two.” Pogo stops at the door and looks up hopefully at Vanya with his wrinkled amber eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re available to start today?”

Nervous as she is to jump in, Vanya could never say no to Pogo. “Of course.”

She follows Pogo up to the second floor, pretending to be unfamiliar with the way as he describes the peculiarities of the job.

“Sir Reginald prefers to limit the skin-to-skin contact of the children due to their genetic dispositions, and as such you will be required to wear long sleeves and sterile gloves,” Pogo explains. He glances back at her she she holds up an arm with a sweatshirt that meets the wrist. “Good, good.”

They turn into the nursery door marked with a 6 and Pogo takes a box from on top of a counter. He pulls out two blue gloves from the box and hands it to Vanya.

“Thank you,” she says, peering into a surprisingly happy memory. The same way that she had never had a job interview, she had never had water balloons as a child. She and her siblings made due with latex gloves instead. She puts on a pair and meets Pogo at the side of the crib.

“Now, now, Master Six,” coos Pogo. “It’s time for your lunch! Miss Anya would like to join you.”

“Oh!” Vanya shocks as Pogo begins to hand the baby to her, but gets a hold of herself. “He’s a cute one!”

She takes Number Six into her arms and is relieved to discover he’s old enough to mind his own head and neck. Nearby Pogo opens a mini refrigerator that’s exactly as tall as he is and hands her a bottle just as a cry comes from a neighboring nursery. “I’ll be just a moment,” he says, excusing himself to check on the other baby.

With Pogo gone Vanya gives her tiny baby brother his bottle, much to his content. “Hello,” she whispers to him. “Your name is _Ben_.”

-

“My name is Dama,” says Klaus. His eyes are burning blue and so is his mouth. There might be light coming out of his ears too, but Ben is a little busy being freaked out that his brother’s been possessed by an alien ghost to fully itemize.

He, Allison, and Diego keep their distance, unsure of what to do. If there was ever an Umbrella Academy protocol for this on the books, they had never used it.

“Hi Dama,” Allison steps forward, hands up in surrender. “I’m Allison. And you’re kind of, uhm, in my brother right now. Is he okay?”

Klaus laughs, another eruption of blue light. “He is like me.”

Diego squints at Ben suspiciously then back at Klaus. “Do you mean he’s actually a ghost too, or like-” Diego gulps. “He’s an alien?”

It’s a little hard to tell with his eyes glowing, but Klaus’ eyebrows draw into an expression of incredulity. "We are _all_ Ix,” he says. “But this one is a soul catcher. Like me.”

Ben, after years of babysitting the Others followed by years as a ghost is a pro at taking existential crisis in stride. “We’re aliens,” he says. Pointing at them in a whirl. “Us. I mean, it kind of explains a lot.”

“Half-aliens?” bargains Diego, his worldview rapidly evaporating. “We were born on Earth!”

“Not the normal way,” Allison points out.

Klaus, or rather, Dama, shrugs.

“Look,” says Ben. “Klaus probably can’t keep this up long. Dama, can you tell us what happened here?”

Dama stretches out her arms. “A millennia ago, Ix was full of life. We knew we couldn’t possibly be alone in that life. We sent a signal out into the stars to find others, and... we did.”

“Earth?” Ben asks.

Dama tips her head at him, no. Considering he just found out there’s other life in the universe it’s kind of a humanocentric assumption, Ben realizes sheepishly.

“They came to us, but they were not like us. The way they broke into our reality- we called them The Rift. They existed out of time, which... made it difficult for them to relate to the Ix.”

Ben glances at the columns of smoke, the only thing left standing on this planet. “Did they do this?”

“It was a retaliation for the murder of their prince,” Dama admits, hanging her head in sorrow. “They devoured soul after soul. I saved the ones I could, so they could be reborn when and where it was safe again. The man they accused left Ix to draw them off, but-”

The blue light extinguishes as quickly as it had first ignited and Klaus drops to the ground. Ben, Allison and Diego rush to him and roll him on his back. Ben pats his cheeks frantically, trying very hard to forget the routine terror of all the other times he’s seen Klaus hit the deck from an OD.

“Klaus! wake up!”

“HahahaWHATTHEFUCK!” Klaus opens his eyes and scrambles back on his hands and butt. “Did I just do a Whoopi?”

“Full Whoopi,” Ben confirms with a relieved exhale.

Diego sits back on his heels. “So did you just hear all that or...”

Klaus jumps to his feet, jolting like someone who’s just been electrocuted. “I don’t know that I heard it so much as a technicolor clown car full of info just parked in my brain.” He shakes his head as though he’s trying to get water out of his ears. “That was. VERY weird.”

“I’ll say.” Allison stands with her hands on her hips, parsing it all out. “So, we’re all aliens. Three guesses who the man that bolted outta here before doomsday was.”

“Dad,” the brothers agree in unison.

“That’s kinda short sighted, for him.” Diego scratches his head and looks out at the wastes of Ix. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the old man recently its that he was anti-apocalypse.”

“Don’t get me wrong, he was a hardass,” says Allison. “But why would he assassinate someone who’s people could destroy Ix?”

“So, funny thing about The Rift,” Klaus clears his throat. “They’re the Others.”

Ben suddenly feels woozy. “ _My_ Others?”

They do it slowly- so slowly that if Ben had not been trained with them he would not notice, but Allison and Diego shift their weight to their back feet, on guard. Ready to move against a threat.

“I’m not..!” Ben backs away from them first. “I come in peace, jeez! I don’t know anything about this.”

Allison hangs back. “You don’t think maybe... Maybe you’re the one Dad killed?”

“That’s not...” He can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Like an accident!” she adds, quickly.

“You can’t think that.” None of his siblings had every characterized his death like this to his face before. Well, mostly because Klaus was the only one who could have, but he was usually too caught up in his own downward spiral to point fingers about Ben’s. But they’re wrong. They have to be. “That doesn't make sense. Whoever attacked this place did it a long ass time ago.”

Then Klaus, the only one who didn’t retreat, frowns at him and Ben’s heart breaks. “No!”

“They don’t exist linearly,” says Klaus. “It wouldn’t matter.”

“You’ve always been special, Ben. In a way that the rest of us couldn’t wrap our heads around.” Allison bites her lip. “Maybe this is why?”

-

Every moment of Number Six’s young life is either carefully scheduled or recorded, or both. All irregularities are documented in triplicate, sealed, and submitted to Sir Reginald. It's more paperwork than Vanya had bargained for, but at least it points her in the right direction. Within a day she’s confident that she’s keeping him fed and changed correctly, and that’s the bare minimum, right?

She does what she can to make up for the rest. Whenever she has the chance and they’re away from the other nannies’ prying eyes she lavishes him with the attention she wishes they all had. She takes off her gloves and rubs his back when he’s cranky. She hums to him when he’s having trouble getting to sleep. During the allotted free hours they stand at the window together and birdwatch, or have a playpen picnic on the roof. Occasionally she’ll cover for another one of the other nannies and instead of keeping the children apart as prescribed, she’ll put them in the crib together to babble at one another. When she has the others she makes sure to take off her gloves, tell them their names, and sing to them too. In a few weeks, she’s met all but baby Number Seven that way. Pogo seems to adore her younger self though, so Vanya tries not to worry.

It really is a shame all these nannies keep quitting on Ben. Sure his little baby belly becomes an unfathomable void now and again, but he’s roly poly and smells sweet as a cookie, and he really only gets tentacly when he has gas. She tries to explain this to Five’s new nanny, a man named Abhijat.

“So if you could just keep an ear open for him, I really need to make a quick phone call.” She smiles a tight, professional smile.

Abhijat makes no expression back. He must have been hired directly by her father.

“I can watch out for Five for you some time, like if you ever need a smoke break.”

“... I don’t smoke.”

Vanya winces. “Yeah. Or if you need some peace and quiet to fill out an irregularity report?”

That gets through to Abhijat. Of all the children, Five easily racks up the most paperwork. “You should go make your phone call,” he agrees.

“Thanks!”

Without another word Vanya takes off down the hall, not towards the public phone the staff would be expected to use, but towards a more private phone in the basement kitchen. The one they used to order secret pizza with, when they were teens.

She punches in Five’s number and mutters at him while it rings. “Pick up pick up pick up.”

“Vanya?” It’s Luther.

“Where’s Five? Sorry it’s just-“ It’s just that she’s never been as close to Luther. He was always too close to Dad for comfort.

Luther doesn’t seem to take offense, at least. “He’s at the library again. He had the idea to try a bunch of numbers for phone psychics in case one of them is Klaus, I think?”

Vanya covers her mouth as she hisses into the receiver, “But he’s supposed to be in the future isn’t he?”

“As far as I can tell, Five is working on calling other places in time. Do not ask me to explain how.”

It sounds like a typical Five exploit, for sure. There’s a long pause, and Vanya almost says goodbye. She’s not sure whether to tell Luther what she heard, or if she ought to wait till she came back for the night to tell them both. Maybe it’s nothing.

Luther makes the choice for her. “Why’d you call? Do you need a ride later?”

Vanya covers the phone for a moment and double checks that she’s the only person in the basement. “Nanny Four took baby Klaus and Seven out for their first haircut today-“

“Aww.”

“-Well, she says that one of them got upset, then both of them got upset, and somehow they shattered all the mirrors and windows in the salon!”

“Oh,” says Luther. “Shit.”

“Has Klaus ever done something like that?” she asks. “Something more than just talking to ghosts?”

“Well...”

Vanya waits for him to say something. Some easy, in hindsight obvious reason why this was normal and not something to worry about. Before she hears back from Luther there’s a creak at the top of the stairs.

“Gotta go!”

She drops the receiver back on the hook as silently as possible and tip toes over to the refrigerator. When Pogo discovers her elbow deep in one of the crisper drawers she pulls out a jar of baby food and waves it at him, self evidently.

“Ran out of his favorite peaches,” she smiles. “I know we’re trying to get Number Six’s weight up, same as the other boys.”

“Very good. I’ll make sure there’s more in the next order, Miss Anya.”

Vanya grabs a few more jars for good measure before heading back upstairs. She gives Abhijat a heads up that she’s back before slipping into Ben’s nursery to unload them. It smells a little ripe in here, so once they’re stashed in his dedicated fridge she comes over to his crib to check his diaper. When she leans in Ben screws up his little face and starts to turn red.

“Ohhh, I can see you’re gearing up, but you don’t need to cry Benny,” she says, tickling his toes. “I’m back.”

But he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t keep turning red either. Instead, his belly ripples, sounding at once like a car crash and a music box, backwards. It looks like an explosion in a silly putty factory, a balled up string of christmas lights, and the way nail polish smells. It also doesn’t. It’s impossible to pinpoint.

Then Vanya hears something that she does recognize. A voice in the vortex.

_“HELLO!? IS THIS? IS THIS WORKING?”_

“Diego?”

Okay, Vanya absolutely _cannot_ fill out an irregularity report on this

-

“Vanya?”

Ben grits his teeth. It’s hard, it’s _unspeakably hard_ to maintain this weird, middle state. Dad called it the ‘gate’. Not quite himself, but not fully given over to the Others. He hasn’t stretched this muscle in years. He has to, though, or they’ll rip Diego apart. Allison squeezes his shoulders, lending him some strength, while Klaus stands by, ready to pull Diego out of the way if this goes tits up.

“Diego where are you? We wound up in 1990!”

This is gonna be a tough one to explain. “Quick- quick as you can, dude,” Ben urges. Time to make that infinite breath capacity pay off.

“So, Listen. Really listen- we’re a little bit past the apocalypse but it’s okay, cause we’re not on Earth, we’re on Ix,” rushes Diego. “-which is Dad’s homeplanet, and by the way we’re all at least half alien, though Ben is like, half human, half Ix alien and half Rift alien prince-“

Vanya scoffs. “What the-”

Allison’s grip on Ben’s shaking shoulder loosens as she stifles a laugh. “That’s not how math works.”

“Not with that attitude!” says Klaus. “Come on Diego!”

Pain seizes through Ben’s spine. “Hurry,” he cries. His knees are about to buckle.

“Th-the Others, the Rift aliens! They think Dad killed Ben. You’ve gotta find out what really happened!”

“AAarrrrrghhh!”

Klaus pulls Diego away just before Ben collapses forward into the red dirt.

Allison screams. “Ben!”

Somehow, the effort hasn’t destroyed him. Somehow, he hasn’t let _them_ out. Inside him the Others roil, denied their freedom. Their _justice_.

Ben lays there, sweat drenched and still terrified. “Did it work?” he gasps.

“Shh.” Allison’s cool hand smooths back his hair from his forehead. It’s very calming. Maybe something Mom used to do.

His brothers hover close by with forced smiles plastered on their faces.

“Might have worked,” says Diego. “Either Five will pop up first, or we try again.”

“But only when you’re up to it,” Klaus adds.

Ben stares up into the purple sky and anchors himself to one of those eerie, unmoving clouds until the feeling in his stomach begins to still. Allison keeps petting him.

“If it was Claire- if _all I wanted was Claire_ and I was tearing everything apart...” Allison shakes her head. “If you gave her back I would stop. If we can tell the Others you’re still alive, we just might be able to put things right.”

-

Vanya stares out the living room window at the cherry trees in Five’s front yard. They were stable and low to the ground. Dotted with blossoms. They’d be good climbing trees when Ben was a little older. If they stayed here and now much longer, maybe she could take him on a field trip to the park. That she can wrap her head around. The Ix stuff? Not so much.

Five paces across the rug, back and forth, back and forth while they sit on the couch and hold their breath. If Five were taller this would be a serious case of deja vu, waiting for Dad to decide on punishment for a particularly egregious offense. When Five suddenly stops short in front of them he even reaches to rub his nose, for lack of a monocle to fuss with.

“They’re just past the apocalypse. They’re on a planet called Ix. We’re all aliens,” Five lists off the facts on his fingers. “Ben’s Others are different aliens who think Dad assassinated Ben. We have to disprove it. Am I getting that right?”

“Yeah.” Vanya squirms in her seat. At least he believes her, but she can’t help like feeling this story is full of holes. “Diego said we’ve got to find out what ‘really happened’.”

“We already know exactly _when_ it happened, at least,” Luther broods.

“Hmm. Find out what ‘really happened’ or else what?” Five crosses his arms. “What’s the threat?”

A light bulb practically appears over Luther’s head. “Maybe they’re involved with the Commission.”

“That’s stupid.” Five starts pacing again. Faster this time.

Vanya ventures a guess. “Or else they can’t get back?”  
  
“If anything, _we’re_ the ones who need to get back,” Luther grumbles. “We’re farther off from when we left than they are.”

Five stops and strokes his chin. “That’s quite a temporal distortion. Must have been waiting around a long time before they figured out how to call us from 2020.” He seems genuinely impressed by their feat, but annoyed that he didn’t work it out first.

The year washes over Vanya. 2020. The closest they had figured out to when they had left the others behind was 2000 to 2005. It had only been a few months here in the 90’s for her and Luther and Five, but the others had spent almost _twenty years_ struggling to get in touch. Meanwhile they’d survived an apocalypse and traveled to another whole planet-

“Wait,” Vanya jumps up from the couch. “What is this apocalypse? Is that what the Others did? Will do?”

Luther’s jaw clenches. “Five. We can’t keep her out of this forever.”

“Five?”

Five does not look at Vanya. He doesn’t say anything. The house rumbles slightly as a train or a truck passes nearby. The wind outside picks up, too. Petals fall from the trees, like pink snow.

“Vanya, tell Five what you told me on the phone today.”

She frowns. “What does that have to do with it?”

That was five crises ago. That wasn’t even a crisis, just a weird fluke thing that happens with superbabies. Who cares? That’s not what she’s worried about. The mention of apocalypse should have been the first thing out of her mouth when she got back to the house!

“What do you guys know about the apocalypse that you’re not telling me?” she pleads. “Is that why we had to come here?”

“Tell me,” Five says to Luther, ignoring her.

“One of the nannies took baby Klaus and baby Vanya to get their haircut,” Luther says carefully. As though it’s very grave matter. “They got upset and busted all the glass in the salon.”

Vanya throws her hands in the air. “So? Klaus is just a little more fucked up then we all knew, big deal!”

The trees outside toss in the wind until they are stripped of their blossoms.

“Vanya, sit down.” Five says, eyes wide.

He looks like a little boy. He _is_ a little boy, sort of. The one she used to make marshmallow sandwiches for, but also the one she takes up to roof with baby Ben for picnics, and just today had taught to say the word-

“ _Please_.”

She sits on the couch and he kneels in front of her, holding her hands. Tears spring to her eyes. Ever since they’ve come to this time period she’d lost her meds. She cries so easily, lately, its embarrassing.

“What is it?” she asks again.

“After Dad’s funeral, we had to leave because of the apocalypse, you’re right about that,” he says. “We thought maybe we could stop it. Now that we figured out what caused it.”

Tree branches rake against the windows. The glass squeals. _All the mirrors shattering_...

“No,” Vanya shakes her head. “I’ve never... Number Seven doesn’t do things like that.”

“Not in a long time,” says Five.

She looks at Luther sitting next to her, hoping he’ll step in like he always does to try and sort things out. Tell her that Five is wrong. He sinks into the couch and looks the smallest he’s ever looked.

“Luther?”

“Dad made you forget. He used your pills, he used Allison...”

“He didn’t like things he couldn’t control.” Five looks as apologetic as he’s capable of being. He knows this lesson better than most.

“If he couldn’t do it, how can I control _myself_?” Her watery voice breaks into tears. “I don’t want to hurt anybody!”

Slowly, Luther puts an arm around her and huddles in. “We know that, Vanya. We’ll help this time.”

Five squeezes into the couch on the other side of her. “You’ve been doing well, you know. Three months without the pills.”

“You’ve been happy, right?” asks Luther.

“Yeah,” Vanya sniffs. She can still smell baby Ben on her clothes. She is happy, mostly. It _had_ been good throwing away all the baggage from their childhood to start over with her baby siblings. She liked them all, without reservation. She could even say she loved them. And maybe... maybe that was extending to the grown up versions too. Where ever they are.

“That’s really good, Vanya.”

She lets herself soak up some brotherly comfort until the wind dies down. They don’t pry, they don’t plan, they just sit peacefully for a few minutes. The house is silent until Luther’s hungry stomach rumbles.

“Let’s go out for dinner,” says Five. He wriggles his bony elbows to get up off the couch. “They still have Ground Round now.”

“We have food here,” Luther points a thumb toward the kitchen.

“But not peanuts,” says Five, already grabbing his keys. “If we’re going to plan baby Ben’s kidnapping, I’m going to need a bottomless supply of peanuts.”

Vanya shoots up out of her seat. “We can’t just take Ben from the Academy, Dad will go ballistic!”

“Exactly. But if we want to find out what happened and talk to the others again we’re gonna need him.”

-

An unmoving sky, a husk of a world, and four children. This is all that is left.

Dama keeps her distance as they rest. She can always make herself known again when they are ready. There is so much more to tell them, but The One Like Her is still adjusting. They are all tired. The Leader and The Mother tend to The Prince, as they should. They make a camp in the shadow of the ship and speak to a woman without a soul that they call mother.

It makes her furious. Is that the best he could do? Take the souls she had saved and starve them? These children- _her_ children were meant to be tended! Of the dozens she had caught for replanting, these four before her now were barely loved except by one and other. These were the last Ix souls that would ever be unless there was a new soul catcher, and that was never guaranteed. What could have been more important to him than protecting them?

Just four children. Dama shakes her head. Unbelievable.

Night falls without a sunset, and she watches over them as they sleep. For so long there has been nothing new on Ix and she has waited so patiently. She is well practiced to wait now. They sleep with their heads all together, feet pointed out like rays of a star. They shift, now and then, at first, but when they are finally, fully under Dama looks closely. They are so beautiful, her children.

She is not surprised which one wakes first in the middle of the night. The One Like Her must find this place strange. He joins her where she stands at the edge of the camp.

“This place could use a white noise machine, you know.”

“It is quiet now,” Dama agrees.

He looks around at the emptiness. “Where I’m from-”

“You are from Ix.”

“Right, right. _Technically_ ,” he says. “Well, where I _grew up_  places that used to be war zones are usually some of the loudest places there are. For me, anyway. For you too?”

She nods. “But this was not a war. I can take the souls from a war and grow them again. In this, The Rift took them first. They took them all.”

“It was an apocalypse,” says The One Like Her. He whistles and puts his hands on his hips. “I guess I can see why Dear Old Dad was so bent out of shape. He figured out Earth was doomed while he was still buggin’ out about Ix.”

What’s left of Dama’s heart drops. “I am sorry. I did not know.”

He laughs. “That our father was tyrant, or that our planet exploded?”

There is no certain thing to say. She cannot say the man she knew was different. More loving. Her children ought to have known that man for themselves. It only draws the cruelty they knew into more terrible comparison. “I am afraid my words cannot do justice to either,” she says instead. “But he was wrong to do as he did.”

“Thanks, I guess.” He kicks at the dirt and grinds a clump of rubble under one toe. He turns to go back to camp but stops short. “Oh, err- Allison wanted me to ask about Claire. Her daughter. Is she like us?”

Dama glances at The Mother, still sleeping with the others. “Not like us. She has her own, new soul. Ix are rebirth. Born again and again from the same.”

The One Like Her scratches his head. “I guess that makes sense or else that custody hearing might have been a three way brawl with Dad, huh?”

Dama can only smile and wait for him to ask.

“Can I-” The One Like Her frowns. It is a big question. “Can I catch souls, like from war or apocalypse too?”

-

It’s a routine training session. Dad is trying to build up Ben’s endurance as a ‘gate’. Apparently there’s some kind of practical value to Ben sustaining the state between closed and open, before the Others emerge. For the life of him Ben can’t imagine what that would be, but at least it’s not the knives again. He doesn’t flinch when the restraints tighten, strapping him down to the gurney. Sure, he can’t move his arms or legs, but when he’s doing the whole ‘gate’ thing it makes him feel sort of weightless anyway. It’s fine.

“Focus Number Six!” In the corner of Ben’s eye, Sir Reginald calibrates a machine that he can’t possibly guess the purpose of.

Actually, Ben finds it’s better _not_ to focus. He rummages through the top of his mind for a song wordy enough to drown out his own internal dialogue and shuts his eyes tight

_That's great!_

_It starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, and aeroplanes, and Lenny Bruce is not afraid..._

Ben has polled all of his siblings, and of course none of them know who the heck that is. It’s kind of a stretch. They were raised to be highly proficient in niche arenas, but popular culture was not one of them.

He thinks he hears Dad say something. He strains to listen.

“... was a misunderstanding.”

That’s all he can make out before a wave of nausea hits him. What is he misunderstanding? Something about someone doing a something to whoever. Whoever Lenny Bruce is, he’s not afraid. _I’m not afraid,_ Ben lies to himself.

“... but that hasn’t happened yet!”

The inside of Ben’s skull thunders. Ugh. He’s gotta stop. They have to stop or he’s gonna hurl all over this experiment. There is a loudquiet purplegreenzebrastripe colored _something_ oozing over him, drowning him in his own senses.

“ _Dad,”_ he wheezes.

“... save the Ix souls, but she must have trapped one of yours,” says his father. Not sure to who.

Ben raises his voice. “Dad! Please...”

“You see!” shouts his father, louder. “I haven’t killed him. He’s here!”

A smell floods Ben’s ears, like a particularly loud flap of a butterfly wing, crossed with the color of fear. His eyes fly open.

“DAD! STOP!”

Sir Reginald leans over his gurney, monocle flashing. He makes no move to loosen Ben’s restraints. “You can have him back!”

“STOP STOP PLEASE DAD!!!” Ben screams over and over until his throat is raw.

“Just spare Ix.”

-

The painful wail of her brother below is overwhelming enough for Vanya, but then baby Ben cries. Their father’s gaze snaps up towards the gallery, following the sound. She and Five and Luther are crouched along the walkway that surrounds the laboratory with only a railing to disguise them. The look of shocked recognition on Sir Reginald’s face sends a shiver down her spine.

It figures. Operation Peanut came this far without a hitch.

Luther vaults over the railing and dives for their father. Both Bens keep screaming. Five grabs Vanya’s elbow as she bounces baby Ben on her hip and teleports them down to the floor. As soon as they land he starts zipping between machines, flipping switches.

“Now would be a great time for some gas,” Vanya tells baby Ben. She pats his bottom.

Next to her, Luther takes Dad down to the floor in a chokehold. His monocle pops out into a pool of his own drool. “Should be... fine,” Luther says. Once Dad stops moving he lumbers to his feet and goes to check on teen Ben. “He’s... he’s dying.”

“Is he ready yet?” asks Five. He nods his head at Vanya.

“I gave him prunes an hour ago to bind him up, I-”

Ben burps.

“Oh!”  
  
His burp smells like the way laying on a shag carpet feels. He starts to ripple over in snapped rubber bands and rhinoceros grunts. He’s blue, he’s a too-small seat on a bus, a book opening to exactly the page you’re thinking of.

“VANYA? ARE YOU THERE?”

It’s strange, but her sibling’s voice sounds more echoey than last time. It disorients her for a moment before she responds. “Allison!” Vanya holds baby Ben up close to her face like a walkie-talkie.

“Vanya, we have an idea how to fix what happened to Ix,” says her sister. “Maybe our world, too.”

There’s still that weird echo feedback...

Five skids to a stop next to Vanya. “What’ve you got?” he barks.

“I heard a rumor that the Others just want their baby back.”

This time when Allison speaks, Vanya figures it out. Her voice is coming from both Bens, like a surround sound theater. The teen Ben on the table is still open, still radiating in an unknowable cacophony of the senses.

Without a word, Five reaches for the Ben in Vanya’s arms.

“No! He’s just a kid!” she shouts, whirling away. He face stings in anger. She just got him back!

Behind her, in front of her, Allison’s voice pleads. “He’s _their_ kid. They’ve already destroyed one world for him, we do _not_ want to give them a reason to destroy another.”

“But I can do that, too!” Vanya realizes. Her eyes burn as she clutches tight to Ben. “You know I can. Five and Luther told me. What about giving _me_ reason?!”

“Vanya,” says a new voice, doubled like Allison’s.

She skirts past her brothers to the other Ben. “Ben!”

“You gave me that name,” he says, but his lips don’t move.

“H-how do you know that?”

“I remember,” Ben echoes. “I remember everything that’s ever happened to me, everything that’s ever going to happen to me.”

Vanya wipes her eyes on the sleeve of baby Ben’s onesie. “Then what happens now!?”

“You let me go.”

Baby Ben’s vortex vanishes. He wriggles in Vanya’s arms and snuggles his head into her neck. The little balls of his fists pull tight on her shirt and then relax. Vanya kisses his cottonball soft hair and before she can think any harder about it, holds him out over the whorl of color and light that bursts from his dying, elder self.

“I love you,” she chokes, and then she lets go.

She can’t see for the tears in her eyes, and then, she can’t see because everything goes black.

-

I’m back!

You don’t remember me. Or maybe you do. I guess you must, or else you wouldn’t have gotten so upset about... Well. You know. Or you _will_. You do things out of order, sometimes.

I’m Ben. That’s what my sister named me, anyway. She took really good care of me. I know things got sorta hairy at the end there. It’s fucked up. I know. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

If you don’t mind, uhm. Because you can bust in anywhere, everywhere, all the time- could you do me a favor?

-

The black turns to blue, endlessly deep. A bird flies by and Vanya realizes it’s the sky. She sits up and looks around.

It’s the roof. There’s no picnic blanket laid out, but the same old planters are there that she used to hold down the corners and keep it from blowing away.

Next to her, Five sits up, then Luther, then on the other side of her-

“Allison, you’re back!”

Klaus and Diego, too. How the hell did Five manage that? Weren’t they supposed to be on another planet?

Their latex catsuits squeak as the group from Ix climb to their feet. “Oh c’mon,” Allison mutters. She staggers over to join Luther.

As he is prone to doing, he checks their perimeter, looking down over the edge of the building. “It’s all still standing,” he says, puzzled.

Behind Vanya the door to the stairwell bursts open. She stumbles out of the way to take cover behind Five, but it’s not The Commission or even their father who comes barreling out, guns blazing. It’s Ben. Older than she’s ever seen him- well,  _her age_ , with arms outstretched. Before he can utter a word she launches herself at him.

“Oof, hey! Love you back,” he wheezes. “But I’ve got the knees of a thirty year old now, watch it.”

“Oh my god.” Vanya swallows the lump in her throat so she can keep smiling. “What about the Others?” she asks, muffled in his shoulder.

“They’re gone now. We won’t be hearing from them again,” Ben winks. As soon as they let go the rest of the family crowds in on him.

“Is _everyone_ back?” Ben asks as he hugs Klaus.

“Well,” Klaus coughs. “Your folks gave us a lift across _all of time_. It was on the way.”

One of Luther’s big arms nudges the crowd apart so he can approach Ben. “Did you end up having to-” Luther can’t seem to bring himself to say the D word.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m here now.” Ben opens the roof door again. “Now everyone get inside already. I’m in the mood to read Dad the Riot Act if you want in on that.”

The others huddle down into the stairs, Vanya trailing behind. As she skips down the steps she realize she has no idea what her life would look like here. Did they leapfrog over the past few months? God, she must have lost her chair in the orchestra. Her apartment. She’ll need a new job, that’s for sure. Maybe The Umbrella Academy is hiring.


	2. Art!

[my art tumblr!](https://stitchyarts.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> I maaaaay have some thoughts for a sequel, so feel free to spin your wheels and wishes in the comments ;)
> 
> I am @stitchyarts on tumblr and twitter where I post fanart and other cool stuff, if you wanna give a follow in the meanwhile.


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